It is a strange need that humans have, to stand out and also belong. Be authentic, and enjoy interactions with people when you are in a group. Resist the urge to tune out, or withdraw socially, particularly when among people you don't know well. Address the group rather than individuals on the side.

Remember, everyone is a little awkward in the beginning, but if you take an initiative to start conversation, or even support existing interaction, they will be comfortable with you much faster than someone who stays aloof. Even though new interactions can be uncomfortable till you get to know people, they ease out quite quickly, if comfortable conversation can begin.

Participate in whatever is happening in your group. Give suggestions, follow them too and be enthusiastic about happenings and very soon you fill find that you are having a great time, no matter who you are with.

I have been trying to raise awareness about the IT rules for several days now. A few people are interested. By and large, most aren't. I have been more and more horrified that people simply don't care about their freedoms, till I realized what the problem was, through a few chance conversations. Here is a crash course on what the IT rules do:

There is outright disbelief. How can it be possible? How can *anyone* censor content? People are seeing the activism as hype. They think we are over reacting and that no authority will allow people making wrong complaints. There is utter cognitive dissonance on the front of lack of any authority - judicial or otherwise. How can it be possible? How can any "aira gaira nathu khaira" take down content on any website? There will be some regulation, no?

No.

There isn't.

So what if someone just refuses?

That person ends up losing a lot of legal protections.

An offline version of this law would be to let anyone complain about any book in a library and see it banned everywhere in the country. I am not being melodramatic, this is how things are.

The rules are so ridiculously unbelievable, that people don't believe it, and thus aren't feeling any particular need to stop it from happening. I mean, really... you can look at content on the net and email off a complaint to the website owner and inform that it violates any of several extremely vague conditions ranging from the garden variety "hateful" "disparaging" "offensive" etc to exotic ones line harming relations with "any" other country or harming minors in "any" way. I have rarely read such a liberal use of "any".

No seriously. It s the same stuff.

"What kind of harm should we aim to prevent?"

Any harm.

Isn't that broad?

"Of course. We want to be able to catch anyone we think is our enemy."

How do we enforce it?

"we don't! Unless we need someone to stop someone, there is no need to hassle our over burdened force!"

Risks of such rules

With these rules, all the government needs to do if media uncovers a scam is to ban the scam from being published to make it disappear.

All anyone needs to do to harass any website is to complain over content. Now think of our political, religious, class, caste differences, and predict what will happen.

The advantage to the government is that it need not take any responsibility or blame, while retaining full powers to enforce censorship to whatever degree they chose. The illusion is that they have made it very democratic, but in reality it will be anarchy, creating a nice safe zone for the government to shut down information they have an interest in.

The utter irony of this scene is that the government has created something that is so unbelievable that no one thinks it could be true. The very ridiculousness of the rules making passing it more possible.

Oh wait... we have seen such legislation in recent times....

Note: This is not an exaggeration, over reaction or paranoia. The rules are really like that. Please read.